Boston Marriage Director on the Pre-Rehearsal Process

As a director, the pre-rehearsal process of working with the design team is always thrilling for me since I like to make things myself. Love to dream big, collaborate, finagle, manufacture, and find the perfect tool or solution for the job. And then, to go from an empty space onstage to a completely imagined world, location, room, well, that's essentially theatre. 

The place we're going to is Boston, shortly before WWI. It was called the Gilded Age in America, riffing on western Europe's Golden Age and following Le Belle Époque. It was a transitional time in the arts, politics, and equal rights. Think: Paris salons, Art Nouveau, the Titanic, Gibson girls on bikes, Irving Berlin, and Taft as president.


The designers and I agree that the two main characters in Mamet's play are trend setters, and as he says "women of fashion." We want to see and feel a sense of change in the era, and remember that these women are also wildly ahead of their time. At the very least, they are what some would call "free spirits." Janie, on scenery, and Rafael, on clothing, provided so many choices to start our process that we could have gone fully in several directions. We did however arrive at a look and feel of the time that is chic and modern, innovative and whimsical--all important elements for our comedy of manners. 

Whaddya think of these fabric choices for our newly decorated drawing room, which incidentally was the room for women? (Men apparently "parlayed" and smoked in the parlor.) We especially love the "girl fabric" for the hers and hers fainting sofas stage right!


-David Zoffoli